Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Tuesday Poem this week: The Gift by C K Stead

This week, Tuesday Poem delves into C.K. Stead's brand new
collection The Yellow Buoy (AUP) and gives the reader two poets for the
price of one: The Gift is about Stead's friendship with the
late Allen Curnow.

As this week's editor, Mary McCallum says, 'The Gift skips into
its subject with its thirteen-syllabled tercets - the delight and sense of
mischief, palpable. And it takes them off, the two poets - both geniuses of a
kind - to the place of 'touch-and-go tides', in a way that makes me think of
the marvellous poem by Bill Manhire, Opoutere, an
elegy tofriend and fellow writer Michael King who died suddenly,
leaving behind another place of tides and fish. These sorts of insights into
the lives of prominent NZ writers and their work - our writing history, if you
like - I find fascinating. But it's also a lyrical poem about two blokes who
hung out in the way blokes in this country do.'

She says the whole collection is anchored by Stead's poems about
his friendships with other writers alive and dead and these are in conversation
with poems that deal 'playfully, curiously, stoically' with old age and what it
brings. She also points out that Stead is no stranger to literary controvery
and he hasn't avoided it in his new book with a short poem that is a retort to
one written by Vincent O'Sullivan.

Check out The Gift and
the commentary and then flick to the sidebar to read Tuesday Poems posted by 30
Tuesday Poets around the world.